The Definitive Darius Guide - S4 (WIA)

Darius Build

Introduction

Hello everyone. This is The Definitive Darius Guide for season 4. I am a long time Darius player and this guide is the culmination of my own experience and theorycraft when playing Darius. I will attempt to give my reasonings every single step of the way from Rune and Masteries, to point skilling to builds. Hopefully this guide will not only make you a better Darius player, but a better player overall because many times the rationale for buying item and using particular runepages are the same regardless of the champion you play.

Lastly, I want to say that this guide is meant to be read by a beginner/intermediate player of the game, and read as a whole. There won't be a lot of bread-and-butter builds for grab-and-go. There will also not be a TL;DR. There will be bad grammar. If grammar is your trigger, then it is time to go. And no I won't check my privilege.

Getting Into the Guide
First and foremost, I want you to understand the role of Darius in a Summoner's Rift(SR). You are NOT a tank and you are not a replacement for one. You are NOT an assassin and you are not a replacement for one. You are a massive lane bully against melee champions. You also have great early game damage, but your scaling for raw burst is mediocre. And thus, the entire guide will center around these four tenants. The build/mastery/rune choices will solidify your role, as awkward it is, a semi-tank/bruiser. Keep this in mind as we will comeback to this.

Masteries

This is the bread and butter mastery for Darius. I know I know, it is incomplete. But the last 5 points can be added anywhere of your choosing, so long you reasoning behind it is sound.

Masteries

1/5

4/1

3/5

1/1

2/5

2/5

1/1

3/5

1/1

3/1

3/5

1/1

I typically run this.

Masteries

1/5

4/1

3/5

1/1

2/5

2/5

1/1

3/5

1/1

3/1

3/5

1/1

2/

3/5

Now I will give a rough dissection each tree, and give you a count of my reasoning behind it.

Offensive Mastery (9)
First I want to make a case that 9 points invested in Offensive Mastery offers the best bang for your buck, mastery point wise. It offers Sorcery 5% cooldown reduction(CDR), Brute Force 0.55AD/level, Double-Edged Sword 2% increase in damage at the exchange of 1% more damage done to you and lastly, Martial Mastery 4 AD. These are all tangible benefits that you will have from level 1. And remember what I said about Darius being an early game bully. Therefore you want as much as possible right upfront, because it gives the best chance to snowball the game.

In comparison, the last 12 points in offensive tree(since people typically run 21 on offense max, not 30) gives you Warlord 5% increase in bonus attack damage, Devastating Strikes 6% armor and magical penetration and lastly Havoc 3% increase in damage. Most of these points are in percentages and scales better and as better as more and more AD you get. Again, you are not an assassin. You won't be building full AD. you will not benefit from very offensively involved tree. This is true especially if you consider that to gain the same amount of AD as Martial Mastery from maxing Warlord , you require 80 bonus AD. We will not be getting that much AD until much later on in the game. Not to mention Warlord is a three mastery point investment. There are much better options in other trees.

Defensive Mastery (16)
The bread-and-butter Defensive Mastery has 16 points. Again, remember that you are an early-game bully, you love early game kills and therefore, you want as much as possible upfront. Furthermore remember that you are very immobile so you will inevitably get poked and prodded before you can get up close and personal. Therefore we invest heavily in defensive mastery as an attempt to mend our weakness.

Block Unyielding Recovery Veteran Scars will all give you tangible bonus to your health as well as "armor" from level 1, solidifying our early game strength. Same with Hardiness and Resistance . Juggernaut is taken because Darius boast among the highest HP at level 18, at a whopping 2100. Only a few champions get more HP than him at level 18. Consequently, we can get a lot out of 3% HP increase. Swiftness is great because Darius has no gapcloser/escape, and he suffers a lot more from slows than someone with one. Therefore we take it.

Support Mastery
This is not the bread-and-butter tree, and there is only one mastery I will ever take on Darius: Fleet of Foot
While 1.5% is not a massive boost, it does help you every step of the way, from escape to chase. It makes your immobility just a bit less worse. Also ANY movement speed edge over your lane opponent can translate into a pull, which can potentially translate into a kill. You want a kill in lane don't you?

Runes

This is the commonly seen AD rune page from S3. It is still seen now and it is still good.

Runes

Greater Mark of Attack Damage9

Greater Seal of Armor9

Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist9

Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage3

This is what I typically run against an AD. If I am against someone AP and especially annoying one, I will switch the Cooldown Reduction Glyphs into Magic Resist/level.

Runes

Greater Mark of Attack Damage9

Greater Seal of Armor4

Greater Seal of Health5

Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction9

Greater Quintessence of Lethality3

Reasoning - Marks
Taking AD marks on a melee top laner like Darius has two reasons. The first one is because Darius has great early game power, therefore flat AD just improves on that aspect. The second reason is if you are against another melee top laner that also happens to be AD, chances are they are running 9 AD marks as well. Therefore you have to run it just to keep up with him in lane.

Reasoning - Seals
The main reason of running armor seals back in S3 is because of gold efficiency. It is simply the most gold efficient option amongst seals. However, armor seals where nerfed slightly after S4. Therefore I have decided to run a combination of HP seals and armor seals.

Now, while HP seals is more gold efficient than armor seals, there is another reason why we run them. Champions have low base armor and decent armor scaling. In comparison, magic resist tend to start out really good but have bad scaling. Therefore players use runes to compensate this. I have opted to run 4 armor seals.

Why 5 HP seals and not 4? Because I like even numbers. (40HP)

Reasoning - Glyphs
There are two good options for glyphs. Cooldown Reduction (CDR) and Magic Resist/level(MR/level). Both of them are gold efficient options. CDR glyphs helps Darius because he plays like a caster thanks to his low CD Q. MR/level glyphs helps to compensate for the pathetic MR scaling champions get. They are the best options and I rarely touch or think of anything else.

Reasoning - Quintessences
For Quints, you can run either flat AD or Armor Penetration. Both of them are gold efficient. You can flat AD to further solidify your early game edge, or you can choose to run Armor Penetration just to counter slightly to their armor stacking. Furthermore it also synergizes well with your passive % armor penetration on E.

Some of you might say "Hey JUjVVwjMWyyW! Why aren't you running movement speed quints if you care about movement speed so much?" This is because the trade-off for 3 point of mastery is WAY less than the trade-off for a set of quints. The benefit a set of AD/AR Penetration quints is massive and I love damage too much to give up.

Furthermore, having 4.5% extra movement speed won't help you much escaping a gank. 4.5% extra speed won't help your pulls that much either. For Darius as long as you have chasing potential (your ms > their ms) you are fine. You can't kill people if they outrun you. But you can't kill people if you have no damage also. As long as you can stick to them (again, your ms > their ms) just focus on damage.

Spells

No exceptions.

My argument against Teleport is that because you are so immobile, you won't be able to match-up against say, a Maokai in terms of teleport pressure. You also cannot splitpush that well because if they come and gank you, they WILL kill you. You are no Nidalee or Zed. While you can down towers relatively fast, you are just too susceptible to ganks.

The way you would match up against a teleport would be to play aggressively and force them to burn their teleport to not lose experience. Sure you don't have the global teleport pressure, but you can deny theirs.

League of Legends is a team based, real time strategy game set in a mythical world of swords & magic where epic battles decide the fate of mystical nations. Game players take on the role of a Summoner who conjures and controls champions to fight for them at the Institute of War. During game play champions gain experience and items to enhance their skills and abilities. How players develop and play their champions can be the difference between a crushing defeat or a glorious victory!